Great moments from musicals coming to RACC's stage

Rita Harvey, left, and Carter Calvert are featured in "100 Years of Broadway."

One of America's great gifts to the world, along with jazz, is the Broadway musical, and the audience will take a tour of that art form in Neil Berg's "100 Years of Broadway" on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. in a concert performance presented by Reading Area Community College's Downtown Performing Arts Series in the Miller Center for the Arts.

Five deeply experienced Broadway singing actors will re-create great moments from shows going back to 1904, with an emphasis on the Golden Age of Broadway (1930s to 1960s), accompanied by producer/composer/lyricist/pianist Neil Berg and a four-piece orchestra.

Berg, a Broadway buff who has written the music for "Grumpy Old Men" and off-Broadway's "The Prince and the Pauper," among others, said he will narrate the show from the piano.

The concert will open with - what else? - George M. Cohan's "Give My Regards to Broadway," from the 1904 Broadway show "Little Johnny Jones."

The five Broadway stars will be performing songs on which they built their careers, as well as songs by George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Rodgers & Hammerstein and Lerner & Loewe, and some from more contemporary shows such as "Wicked."

The jazzy vocals of Carter Calvert, who has starred as the lead in "Evita" and regionally in "Always Patsy Cline" with Sally Struthers, will be heard in songs such as "Memory" from "Cats" and "All That Jazz" from "Chicago" or the title song from "Cabaret," Berg said.

Soprano Rita Harvey, who starred in "Phantom of the Opera" for six years and played Hodel in the Broadway revival of "Fiddler on the Roof" with Harvey Fierstein, will sing some of the great songs from history.

Andrea Rivette, known for starring in "Jekyll & Hyde" and "Les Miserables," will sing one of the "Jekyll" songs and other classics, Berg said.

Baritone Robert DuSold, who starred as Javert in "Les Miserables," will channel Ezio Pinza in songs from "South Pacific," and tenor Danny Zolli, famous for playing roles such as Jesus and Judas in "Jesus Christ, Superstar," will lend his expertise to the rock musicals.

"I put this show together for the general public, so people will recognize the songs," Berg said. "It's a great show for parents and grandparents to introduce their kids and grandkids to Broadway theater."

He said even though the orchestra is small, it is known for playing big.

"It sounds like a full orchestra, and we don't cheat," he said. "There's no pre-recorded stuff."

The show has been touring for a decade and shows no signs of slowing down, with performances in more than 100 cities a year all over the United States.

"The reason we get the respect we get," Berg said, "is that the touring system in the 1970s and 1980s used all Equity actors who had starred in New York. Today it's too expensive to tour that way. Now they aren't getting the same caliber of talent. We bring the stars, the talent."

Berg said the cast will come into the lobby after the show to meet and greet the audience.

Berg is currently working on several new musicals. He scored the 2013 film "Once Upon a Time in Brooklyn." He owns, along with John Asselta, a theater camp for students in Montvale, N.J., which teaches more than 200 young singer/actors each year.